Wednesday, 20 June 2012

LEIF G.W. PERSSON'S ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER LIFE

Note: This review
does contain a spoiler of sorts. You can leave the final paragraph
until after you've read the novel...

When I reviewed Leif
G.W. Persson's Between Summer's Longing And Winter's End
earlier this year (you can link to that here), I likened it to a cross between Sjowall &
Wahloo and Stieg Larsson (particularly TheGirl Who Kicked
The Hornet's Nest). There
the subject was the murder of Olaf Palme, and it was ironic that
policeman Lars Martin Johansson, investigating a different murder, is
not only unable to 'solve' the most important crime in Swedish
history, but that the man most responsible not only gets away with
it, but gets the girl Johansson fancies.

In Another Time,
Another Life it's years later, 1999, iand Johansson, is now
married to that woman, though the circumstances of their
re-connection are not as innocent as he knows. Thought of as a safe
pair of hands, has just joined the Security Police, Sepo, one of the
many layers of secret police set up to protect themselves from public
scrutiny each time the public is given scrutiny to the previous
layer. But the story begins in 1975, when the Red Army Faction took
over the West German embassy in Stockholm, leaving four dead, two of
them the terrorists. Johansson discovers that files on two Swedes who
allegedly helped the Germans, have disappeared and reappeared in his
files, and want to find out why. One of them was the victim of a
murder in 1989, and the statute of limitations is about to run
out—but Johansson's friend Bo Jarnebring, who also appeared in the
previous book, and the competent, attractive Anna Holt, were the
detectives on that killing. Their investigation got nowhere,
primarily because it was headed by the pig-headed, corrupt, alcoholic
Backstrom (think NYPD Blue's Bunz without the conscience).

Now, reopening that
investigation takes Johansson deep within the workings of the Swedish
state—not only in terms of solving the crime, but also in terms of
figuring out just who wanted the whole thing reinvestigated, and why.
And why it was covered up in the first place.

If Summer's Longing
crossed Martin Beck with
Mikke Blomkvist, Another Time, Another Life is like Beck
crossed with Joseph Wambaugh, and Backstrom, convinced this is a
simple homosexual killing barely worth solving, is a character worthy
of Wambaugh at his best. Johansson, who in the previous book showed
signs of being bound for the lonely life of a Beck, here seems much
more in command. The subtleties required by his new job are still a
strain, but not beyond him, and in the end he achieves a result that
satisfies his sense of justice, and probably pleases those above him
as well. My one criticism of Summer's Longing was for its
being somewhat prolix, but not only is this book written much more
tightly, the result for Johansson means the story is resolved in a
way the Palme killing never could be. In that sense, despite the fact
that you almost need to know the characters' backstory from the
previous book, and you can see where some of their personal lives are
headed, this might be a better place for newcomers to Persson to
begin.

The brilliance of the
story, however, lies in its coda, where Backstrom gets the last
laugh, in the end 'solving' the 1989 murder, pinning it on a gay
serial killer. That he uses liquor he stole from the murder victim's
cupboard ten years earlier, and that the bottle is a banana liqueur
which even the thirsty Backstrom presumably found unapproachable, is
a bit of subtle irony which Swedes would recognise, and I assume find
even more amusing than I did. Underneath the humour, Persson does
shine a light on Swedes and their society, and in that broader sense
may be the most interesting of the novelists in the current Swedish
crime boom.

Another Time,
Another Life by Leif G.W. Persson

Doubleday £16.99
ISBN 9780385614191

NOTE: This review will
also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

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